Circling Round Everything:2015-2016

By Arlene Corwin

Lifes not a cloud of hodgepodge, but a sparkle of connections and reconnections disparate in appearance. Theres not a noun that fits. Not one cloud', sparkle, not one verb, adjective or noun that covers it because this thread of being is always changing its appearance.
So we write. Differing poems, differing themes. But all one chain of links of different sizes and shapes: variations on a theme.
One long metaphor for being-ness connected by causes subtle and apparent, immediate and easy to trace or long back and untraceable.
With not one single word to take it all in, to describe it, name it, it is an appearance, a going-on. A perpetual ongoing.
Also something to see through, to be comforted by when it looks like a cause for suffering, something to enjoy when it does not.
It is lists of inadequate words and findings, of gradualness leading to suddenness, of the invisible to visible.
Its everything. So we write about everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524576424

Arlene Corwin

Arlene Corwin is a professional jazz singer/pianist, yoga practitioner of some 40 years, and author of 11 previous books, each circling round some singular aspect of life. A graduate of the High School of Music & Art and Hofstra University, she lives, performs and teaches in Sweden.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Arlene Corwin.

ISBN:      Softcover             978-1-5245-7643-1

                eBook                 978-1-5245-7642-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover painting by Kent Anderson/back cover photo by Ulf Magnusson, used with permission

Rev. date: 05/26/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

PART 1 2015

A Giant Yes

Adjectival Names

All Done In A Night

All I Think About

Am I Midas?

An Hour Is So Little But Enough

An Ordinary Person

Analysis Of A Marriage: A Part of Change

Bad Things

Bed

Before One Goes

Between Two Covers

Bombs, The Bombed & Bombing

Breaking Down

Caffeine Magic

Caffeine, Fine Caffeine

Can’t Screw Anymore

Cat Intelligence, or Watching Albert

Catch That Phrase

Chronicling A Life

Cool and Unpredictable

Corny Stuff

Dead Men In My Life

Dear God: A Letter & A Statement

Death Keeps Coming To Visit

Did Curiosity Kill The Cat?

In Life As Well As The Gym, Do It Badly

Don’t Copy Or, Have I Said This One Before?

Dust On A Mirror

Eccentricity Isn’t Craziness, It’s Daring

Eulogy Mine

Every Thought Is Worth A Poem

Every Time I Think Of You

Everybody Bosses Me Around

Everything A Yin And Yang

Everything Needs Adjustment

Evolution

Exceptional Lady

Finally A Summer

Finding My Way Back

Forgotten Male Vanity (A Theme To Ponder)

Frightened Of Time

From The Mediocre Upwards - The Usual Procession

Fun Without Foundation

Gardening The Forest: A Work In Progress

Getting Bored Again

God Is Silent/Does The Sun Answer?

Going Alone

Goodness, God

Gratitude Two

Happy Birthday, Emma

Happy Birthday Then

Haven’t Written In Days

Hi There!

How People Survive

How Do I Accomplish What I Accomplish?

Howling At The Moon

How To Tell Character By The Way He Butters Bread

I Don’t Like Invisibility

I Don’t Think I Want Fame

I Even Bore Myself

I Guess I Am A Pessimist

I Know Where To Find You

If It’s Breathing It Should Live

I’ll Send You The Menu Or, I Like To Rhyme

I’ve Decided

Imprisoned In Jeans

In The Image Of

In The Mood For Couplets

Insulting God

Inventions Always Supersede Inventions

It Isn’t Poetry

It Was A Sunny Day Today

It’s Such A Cliché, But…

It’s A Beautiful Summer Day

It’s Called A Strategy

Just Can’t Wait

Justice

Keep That Lipstick Going (It’s Never Finished)

Knees

Lazy Man’s Confessions (When The Dictionary’s In The Other Room)

Life Can Be A Yoga

Found on a Scrap dated 8.31.2012

Found on same scrap:

Found on same scrap: updated 7.10.2015 Playing At Invention

Life Is Serious

Life On The Hard Disk #1

Life On The Hard Disk #2

Little Albert With No Ego

Lumbago

Men Who Need Lots Of Women (analysis and summary)

¹st Draft

My I Is Always You

My Life: A Cliché

My Intuition Says

Negative News Again

Nepal Nepal

No Choice Diary

Yoga For the Mature: A Lecture

Notes From A Non-Political Fly-On-The-Wall

November 14th, 2015 (there’s been a six-fold terrorist attack on France)

More About The Terror Attack In France

Oh, How I Understand Vanity

Old

One Day Closer

One Long Poem

One’s Friends Are Either…Or

Pick Yourself Up

Pizza of the Moment

Publishing The Self Published Book

Rhymes To Think About

Ritual and Custom

Scrap Notes

Check Your Motive

Sending Out Good Vibes

Sending Out Good Vibes Again

Sick

Skinny Girls With Big Breasts

Slow Learner

Small, Small Lazinesses

So Much To Do, So Little Time To Do It In

So Obvious

Starting Up Ending Up

The Art of Being In the Kitchen

The Blurbing Game

The Day I Passed Garbo

The God Question II (It Never Goes Away)

The Hard Disk Of The Brain

The Man Who Killed My Brother #1

The Man Who Killed My Brother #2

The Mental Institutions Of The Mind

The Miracle of Electronics

The Most Mysterious

The Noble Prize #2

The Noble Prize (original found in my files) #1

The Opening

The Perks Of Having One Partner (a non-rhyme in meter)

The Relativity Of Fame

The Skin And Bones

The Skin & Bones II

The World I Awoke To This Morning

The Yoga Teacher

There’s Nature & There’s Nature (Yours)

There’s Nothing You Can Do About It

The Skin On My Face Is Growing Downwards

They Leave Their Homes

Descending From…

The Jew

This Poetry Stuff (Needs Explaining) Mathematics With Emotion

Three Times S Silence, Stillness, Solitude

Time Isn’t

To Catch The Phrase

Trapping The Universe *

Until I Have Nothing More To Say

Waiting For Something To Happen (I Am A Monad)

Wandering Around The Mind

Want Of The Day

What I Like For Breakfast

What Is There To Celebrate?

What It Is To Age

What We Wear Around Our Necks

When Genius Walked The Streets #1

When Genius Walked The Streets Before The Wars #2

When I Left

When You Get Older

Whole-Body Sex

Why I Am What I Am

Why Is He Smiling?

Work In Progress: Gardening The Forest

World Famous & Legendary

Yestiny

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys

You Are…

Starting Up, Ending Up

Z =The Most Ridiculous Of All

PART 2 2016

A Big, Big Moment

A Bit Enigmatic

A Day Of Thinking or This Is The Way My Brain May Work On Any Given Day

Breakfast In Bed

Going In To Thank

Late Afternoon

A Few Short Years Of Grace

A Perversion Of The Present

A Simple (Minded) Show-Off

A Slice Of Sloth

A Visit To The Doctor

Albanian Observation

Albert Cat Is Sick

Albert Cat’s Fifth Birthday

All I Do Is Watch

All In A Day

A Thought Is A Bubble

My Mind And Yours

Who Is Reading My Poetry. Com?

Full Of Rancor

Ambitious People

An Introvert With An Extrovert Personality: A Naked Poem

And The World Gets Through Its Day

And Then He Wonders Why I Cry

Another Boding Sign

Baby Steps

Basic Kindness To Bugs Imprisoned On Window Pane: Instructions

Be A Buddhist for A Second

Before One Goes

Boredom #2

Boredom

Call It By Its Right Name

Call It What You Will: It’s Always There

Can’t Keep Up

Can A Plumber Be Any Dumber?

Catch That Thought

Cats Have No Pride

Chains, Phases, Cycles: Saying Yes

Channel Of Blessing

After Brexit Circling Round Self-Interest

Consumer Of Existence

Content For The Moment

What Exactly Is A Monad?

Cosmic Coordination

Cosmic Coordination #3

Cycles Of Continuation

Dealing With Death Beforehand

December Eight: A Special Date

Do You Feel Loved?

Doesn’t Nnyone Want Regularity Nnymore?

Don’t Copy Or, Have I Said This One Before?

Don’t Leave This Planet Before It’s Time

Endless Energy

Energy The Treasury

Everybody Needs A System

Everything Is Autobiography

Every Thought

Expansion & Contraction

Facial Hairs Mystify

Fooling Around Or, Every Movement Has A Purpose

For Those Who Can’t Believe

Funny Autobiographic Thoughts

Gerontology

Getting The Name Right

Goddesses & Godlessness

Guess Who?

Gustav The Cat

Happy Birthday, Andreas

Happy Birthday Mickey

He Always Makes Her Laugh

He Cannot…

He Never Did Believe

Horny Now & Then*

How Do I Accomplish What I Accomplish

How To Communicate Climate Change

I Am Jewish

I Don’t Want Fame

I Like Looking Like A Boy

I Like To Be Alone

I Love My Cat

I Take My Life Seriously

I Went To A Funeral Today

I Woke This Day Without The Need To Pray

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet

To Never [Not] Be Great

I’ve Forgotten…

Incredible!

Inner Conflict

Intimations Of Mortality

Inundating The Editor

It’s Called A Strategy

It’s Your Birthday, And

It Could Happen To You And Probably Has

I’ve Had Many Names

Joys Of Aging

Karma and Rufus

Last Of The Season

Lazy Love

Let’s Not Care

Letter To A New Mystic.

Life Is A Selection

Limited Vocabulary

Lower/Higher

Lumps & Bumps

Me Against Them

Mediocre People Are Always At Their Best

Never Finished – Always On The Way

No Choice Diary

No Connection With Numbers

No Longer A Mystery

Non-Award Winning Poet

Non-Sequiturs – Or Are They?

Watching A Fly

November 8th, 2016

Obsessed

Old

Old #2

Older By The Minute

Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety Sex*

On Meditation

Our Tractor Man

Planting Seeds [Of Suspicion]

Playing With Your Self #1

Playing With Your Self #2

Qualified Abstinence

Recurring Themes, Recurring Dreams

Reflection On A Self-Destruction

Resisting Classification

Robin Williams

Sadness In The Extreme

Scrap Notes

Check Your Motive

Self-Published [And] Proud Support, Criticism & Indifference

Semi-Portrait Of A Friend

Seventy

Sitting Outside A Day In May

Sitting Up In Bed Building A Career

Splat!

Still 9/11

Success & Epic Failures #1

Success & Epic Failures #2

Sven Wollter Gets Sick

Symptoms Of Development: After An Election

The Aging Couple

The Art of Criticism

The Basis Of Hatred

The Bellybutton Is A Smelly Place

The Big Decision

The Book

The Clocks Have Gone Ahead In Sweden

The Cold

The Constant Meditator

The Day I Passed Garbo

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed

The Doped Olympics

The God Question II (It Never Goes Away)

The Land Of Make Believe

The Man Who Killed My Brother #1

The Man Who Killed My Brother #2

My Sin: The Minute That I Meant To Use

The Most Published Book In The World

The Most Subtle of All: Intention

The Movie I Saw

The Only Reliable

The Tendency In All Of Us

The Time When There Was Nothing To Say Or, Content Is All

The Way of Things

The Wrinkled Years

There’s Accepting & Its Antonym

This Fame Stuff

This Morning’s Terror Deed In Brussels

This Mystery Desire

This Strange Thing Happening

This Underlying Sadness

This Writing Business

Three Pages A Day

Through Poetry I Try

Time Pains

Tips Are Everywhere

To Hell With Meat

To Obedience

To Remember At all Times

To the Poets of Hello, Hello!*

To Write For Whom

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem

Transforming A Bad Poem Into A Good One

Trying Out Ideas In Form

Twin Souls, Leo & I?

Unknown

Waffle Iron

Waiting It Out

Watching The Signs Of Aging

Watching The Signs With Sighs

We Need Something That Looks Down On Us

What Control?

What Happens After Death?

What Is Faith, Really?

What’s The Fuss About?

When I’m Gone

Where Are You Eric?

Who The Hell Is Reading Me?

Why Am I Afraid To Die?

Why I Use Punctuation

Windy Water Whips The Window

Wiping Out A Planet

With No Idea Beforehand

Words About Revising

(Yet Another) Portrait Of A Friend

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys

You Can’t Be A Perfectionist

You Don’t Believe That You’ll Get Old

What I’d Like?

Circling Round Everything

2015-2016

I write. 2015 is over and the result is some 170 odd poems. Edit, whittle down - poems, edited, some carried over into 2016. I search for a title for the book. I’ve never published a collection by year, always by theme.

Now 81 years old with over 30 thematic collections. I want to get them all out into the world before I go, a project which seems almost impossible, the life work still on the go. 30 some odd collections – that’s roughly 3,400 ‘items’ and still growing.

The writing started in 1949. It’s now 2016. Should I do it by year? It seemed reasonable format since each year represents a phase, a different Arlene – well not different, but an Arlene with new sites, new sight; new phase, new face seeing life from new angles.

This phase, that phase: I’ve brooded over every phrase to find a title for the book; how to describe and what to call a year of life, a year of thought’s collections in poetic form.

For the moment the book will be called Life Is Phases Only: 2015/2016 A Book Without Theme. Below are titles I was playing with: a reflection of what was going on in my mind 2015/2016, some of which may well wind up as poems in themselves.

Half of Life is Cleaning Up; Fed Up; Rough Cut; Luck Favors the Prepared Mind; The Slightest Movement Produces Change; Too Young To Appreciate; In The World Of 2015;From 2015 to 2016; All Of 2015 & Part Of 2016; All In A Day’s Work; Giving Titles To Everything; Printing Press of the Mind; Anything Can Happen In Nature; A Little Autumn In The Air, A Little Winter too; Attracted To Things I Don’t Understand; Invisible Ocean of Energy Suffusing Everything In the Universe; Talk Eats Your Energy: Silence; Continuous Transformation, That’s What You Want; The Atman Is A Homogeneous Silence; Somewhere In The Back Of My Head (lies an inner ear, always waiting for the pregnant phrase to catch me); In The Word World Of 2015; It Was 2015; Only Phases; Title Collector; A Book Without Theme;

As is my practice, I’ve placed the name of the poem, the date, the collection or collections into which I believe it belongs, my name and any other small details I want to remember, at the bottom of each poem (revised, re-worked, re-written, found on a scrap…) to remind myself that each collection is intended to be or has become a book. On top of which, I’ve this irresistible need to keep track of myself.

If some of the poems – especially the ‘birthday’ poems, the ‘occasion’ poems seem superficial it’s not because they’re meant to be, or that I haven’t given them thought and attention. It’s just that there are times when a sense of duty outweighs the more perspicacious one.

I’ve included the text for a lecture called Yoga For The Mature because the yoga theme reappears relatively often as poetry, and as prose it’s just a good piece of advice.

As for the weight and thickness of the book, it’s a thick one. I’m trying to squeeze in as much as possible in that this is a self-published book and I’m allowed 799 pages for the same price as I would pay for a slim volume of poetry. And volume is what I have, hoping that there is enough quality to warrant a bedside book, one that you can and will go back to time and again.

As of this date I am 82, the book is entitled Circling Round Everything 2015-2016, the number of pages has been whittled down to three hundred something, and I’m still hoping that there is enough quality to warrant a book whose contents you will enjoy going back to again and again.

Part 1

2015

A Giant Yes

The chemistry of yes,

Who studies it?

It works, we know.

But who examines, analyzes it -

This science

Of the yes?

Crossing and connecting,

Does it reach each basal cell?

Synapses experimental, confident or tentative,

Avant-garde or commonplace -

Insight, abstract thought, acceptance

Ending all in giant yes –es

Or, one giant Yes!

A Giant Yes 7.25.2015

Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Science II;

Arlene Corwin

Adjectival Names

The program starts.

They say "Presenting so and so,

Actor, prince, comedian".

Known for title, occupation,

Stumping, stamping, stomping on

A you you always knew as you,

A view you thought was you

Now pushed that you bit further,

Exploration even harder.